Connecticut regulators expected to issue ruling on utilities’ tree-trimming plan within days

NEW HAVEN >> State utility regulators are just days away from issuing a ruling on how Connecticut’s electric utilities should go about trimming trees that could threaten distribution networks.

John Betkoski III, vice chairman of the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, said this week that a decision could come as early as Thursday, but no later than Monday. Betkoski said PURA has made very effort to address the concerns of both the utility companies, who say a more aggressive approach in trimming is needed to ensure reliable electric service, and ratepayers who say the companies’ plans are overkill.

“We want to make sure we get this one right,” Betkoski said.

Officials with the The United Illuminating Co. discussed their tree trimming approach Tuesday with about two-dozen women from a regional gathering of the League of Women Voters at the Graduate Club on Elm Street. Jim Cole, director of electric systems operations for Orange-based UI, fielded a number of forceful questions from those who attended the luncheon gathering.

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“What’s so magic about eight feet?” asked one woman, referring to UI’s enhance trimming guidelines, which call for trimming or cutting of limbs and trees within eight feet of the utility’s distribution wires. “There has got to be other ways to do this besides what you’re talking about, which is going to leave densely populated communities like West Haven looking like scorched earth.”

Cole explained that the eight-foot zone for enhanced trimming is based upon historical growth rates.

“We need to protect our system from extreme weather,” he said.

Much of the meeting’s question and answer session was devoted to question about why the utility wasn’t considering a strategy that includes burying more of its distribution wires instead having them hanging overhead.

Cole said the cost of such an undertaking would be prohibitive and would have to be passed along to the utility’s ratepayers. He said a study done by UI estimates that in the more rural parts of the towns the utility serves, burying distributions wires would cost $3 million per mile, while doing so in more urban areas would cost five times that.

“There isn’t a lot of new development going on in the area that would allow us to phase it (burying distribution wires) in,” Cole said. “Generally speaking, what we’d have to charge for rates doesn’t support under grounding. It would put companies out of business.”

One woman was indignant that Cole said under grounding of cable would have to be paid for by ratepayers.

“You had enough spare change in your pockets to go and acquire that Philadelphia gas utility,” she said referring to the announcement in early March that UIL Holdings, UI’s corporate parent, has signed <URL destination="http://www.nhregister.com/business/20140303/uil-holdings-to-acquire-philadelphia-gas-works">a deal to purchase Philadelphia Gas Works, the nation’s largest municipally-owned natural gas utility, from the city of Philadelphia for $1.86 billion in cash.

</URL>Cole said such a comparison was misleading because the deal involves some borrowing on the part of UIL Holdings.

Mary-Michelle Hirschoff, a New Haven Garden Club spokeswoman, told Cole that UI and the state’s other legacy electric utility, Connecticut Light & Power, “have not produced the kind of data that wholesale cutting of trees is warranted.”

Call Luther Turmelle at 203-789-5706. Have questions, feedback or ideas about our news coverage? Connect directly with the editors of the New Haven Register at AskTheRegister.com.